US coronavirus infections top 13m as 65 Americans die every hour from Covid-19

Thursday marked the 24th consecutive day that the country reported more than 100,000 new Covid-19 cases.

Figures from Johns Hopkins University show that every hour, around 65 Americans are dying from the virus.

According to the latest data, 272,254 Americans have died after testing positive for Covid-19 as the coronavirus death toll continues to rise, by far the largest number in the world.

The number of hospitalisations has also been rising in recent weeks, with some medical centres reaching capacity.

On Thanksgiving earlier this week, the US reported more than 90,000 hospitalizations for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, according to  The Covid Tracking Project.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest forecast that the number of Covid-19 deaths could rise as high as 321,000 in the next four weeks.

Dr Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, told CNN on Thursday: "I don't mean to be scary but ... today can change the course of Covid for our country for the rest of the year.

 

Doctors prepare to perform a percutaneous tracheostomy procedure on a patient in ICU in Houston, Texas

"Infections that are sustained today are going to show up in three weeks and are going to show up in deaths over Christmas and New Year’s and are going to spread in every state."

The warning came after high numbers of people were reported to have travelled to spend Thanksgiving with their families.

Following the spike in the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths, more than 20 states have introduced restrictions.

The measures include mask mandates and limiting capacity of bars, restaurants and places of worship.

Los Angeles County on Friday issued a new stay-at-home order as cases continued to rise.

Dr Joseph Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Texas, said that he expects cases and hospitalisations to surge even higher after Thanksgiving.

 

Many people travelled for Thanksgiving despite the rising number of coronavirus cases

He said: "My concerns for the next six to 12 weeks is that if we don't do things right, America is going to see the darkest days in modern American medical history."

Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, has also warned of the risk of more infections and deaths following Thanksgiving on Thursday.

He told USA Today : "If the surge takes a turn of continuing to go up and you have the sustained greater than 100,000 infections a day and 1,300 deaths per day and the count keeps going up and up … I don’t see it being any different during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays than during Thanksgiving."

He said he would probably spend Christmas with his wife, but away from their three daughters, as the family decided to do on Thanksgiving.

Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, said: "We are on track to continue this accelerated pace of the epidemic and see even more speed of rise of cases because of the movement indoors, of activities around the country and because large numbers of people have moved around the country for the holidays."

The latest figures show there have been 13,608,696 coronavirus cases in the US so far.

The Covid-19 death toll in the US is the highest in the world Passengers at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport in Florida on Thanksgiving Bodies in bags labelled 'Covid' are moved into a morgue in El Paso, Texas

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